There’s a nagging doubt in my mind whenever periodicals rush to give their rankings to various business schools considering the moolah it generates in terms of ads (Best in the Business, Sept 15). Is there a vested interest or deliberate hype in ‘marketing’ B-schools? I’m reminded of an angry letter which appeared in Time in the late ’80s soon after the Wall Street meltdown. An investor who lost all his money had written that "it’s a crime paying obscene salaries to the so-called whizkids from great business schools who produce nothing but specialise in blowing up the hard-earned savings of millions of poor Americans through their investment/ business strategies".
V. Parthasarthy, Mumbai
Being an ex-student of the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (jbims), Mumbai University, I was sad to see that it did not even figure in your list of India’s top 50 B-schools. You have other names from Mumbai, most of which are not even acknowledged in the corporate sector when it comes to recruitment. Maybe it’s the Mumbai University’s poor "PR" which is responsible for this lapse. But then you could have done some research by interacting in the corporate circles.
Abhay Upadhyay, Mumbai
You’d probably be deluged by protests/raves about your B-school rankings. I too challenge a claim you make, but in the light of the importance rankings hold for an outsider who doesn’t know much about B-schools. The rankings may well be gospel for such a person and perhaps Outlook needs to introspect whether it’s playing the role of a responsible sentinel through its methodology. As an iim student, I couldn’t care less about your rankings. But the scores for your international linkages are a howler. iimb has exchange programmes with top B-schools in the world—Chicago gsb, London BS, Univ of California-LA, University of Northern Carolina, Texas, A&M Univ, University of Washington. iimb happens to be the only Indian B-school partnering with them. And they are the best out there (unlike some of the unheard-of B-schools in Europe, which are the stars at other iims). iimb also happens to be the only B-school offering an International Business in Practice course, as part of which students work on a live project in a foreign country. And you think other iims are better in international linkages? I hope you recognise the changing scenarios in business education and are more careful in future.
Jagmeet Sidhu, on e-mail
Is there any possible reason why a premier B-school like the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar, does not even figure in your list of B-schools this year when it’s been among the top 15 B-schools regularly.
Ritwick Sanyal, on e-mail
Your survey seems very meticulous. It shall be a handy guide for working people who want to pursue a full-time PGDBM.
Pranay Verma, Bokaro Steel City
Earn, Burn and Learn. So why didn’t you guys feature isb in you rankings?
A.K., Hyderabad
Recently, Indian Leftists and Muslims demonstrated against the visit of Israeli premier Ariel Sharon for his being responsible for the killing of up to 3,000 Palestinians (Sharon’s Stone On Our Heart, Sept 15). How come these people did nothing when the government of Saudi Arabia, the sole proprietor of their holy lands, provided asylum to Idi Amin who is known to have killed a few thousands and who was particularly harsh on Indians? If Indian Muslims really value human rights so much, they should have boycotted Saudi Arabia too for this complicity.
Udita Agrawal, new Delhi
This refers to your calling Pete Sampras’ tennis "boring and cold" (twtwtw, Sept 8). That remark belongs in a yellow rag. Only true lovers of tennis can understand or appreciate the quality of Sampras’ tennis or the class of the man.
Suresh Tinaikar, Mumbai
There’s great danger in letting ourselves admire the educated terrorist (When the Quiet One Weaves a Web, Sept 8). He may wreak destruction for commitment, not money, but the fact remains he’s betraying a country that gives him all the freedom, privileges and opportunities of an Indian citizen.
Krishnamurthy Girishankar, New Jersey, US
Apropos P.S. Jha’s opinion Quagmire in the Desert (Sept 15)—all this chaos and the Bushies are yet to get off their high horse! One would’ve understood this intransigence had anything good come of it. But the US is worse off now after putting in hundreds of billions of dollars into its illegitimate occupation. Worse, Bush too has seen his image dip. So who knows what country he might choose to "liberate" in time for his re-election next year?
Nihar Panda, Patchogue, US
Arvind Pandey’s initiative is good (Mera Bihar Mahaan, Sept 8) but why should his slogan be ‘Garv se kaho hum Bihari hain’? It has the bad odour of Tamil, Shiv Sainik and Keralite-style regionalism.
Lalu Ustaad, Varanasi
You do right to take up the subject of the Employment Guarantee Scheme (Rural Roadblock, Sept 8). Your representative discussed the topic with me quite a few times as I’m associated with Vachan, a developmental organisation working with the tribals of Nashik’s Igatpuri and Triambakeshwar blocks. We’ve had a distinct experience of putting this scheme to work over the last three years. Yet we find no mention. Of course, it’s your prerogative, but is it because you’re determined to show its failure that you can’t even include one instance of success? Also, the photo you used was provided by us. You could at least have given us credit.
Ashwini Kulkarni, Nashik
I don’t agree with Habib Tanvir (10 Questions, Sept 1) saying he wouldn’t mind Hindus taking on the mullahs and the maulvis. In these communally charged times, it’s best to mind one’s own business, and work to eradicate one’s own shortcomings rather than try to set others right. There are enough ills within orthodox Muslim society. Widows’ rights, for one. They don’t even have the basic right of guardianship for their minor children under Muslim Personal Law. Will Mr Tanvir do something about it to begin with?
Zohra Javed, Allahabad
Apropos an item in Big Buzz (Sept 15), we’d like to say categorically that Dabur Foods’ Real Fruit Juice is the No. 1 fruit juice, commanding a marketshare of more than 55 per cent. The Burman family and our parent company, Dabur India, strongly support Dabur Foods as one of the fastest-growing divisions in the group.
Amit Burman, Executive Director, Dabur India Ltd
As a subscriber of Outlook, I eagerly await the magazine every Monday but get distressed seeing pages and pages on cricket (The Game Drags On, Sept 8). While scanning your back issues, I found cricket in at least 39 of them. And when Anju Bobby George won a medal, you relegated her to the inside pages rather than put her on the cover.
Raja Bharadwaj, Mumbai
Your observation in Bibliofile (Sept 15) that Indian publishers keep back at least 20 copies of a published book in their godown to deny the rights to the author or his progeny once the book goes out of print reveals the unethical practices of Indian publishers. I’m a member of the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain and as per the standard contract in the UK, in case the number of books in the publishers’ stock goes below a certain number, say 200 for paperbacks or 100 for hardbacks, the author can ask the publishers to bring out another edition. If they fail to do so, the rights revert to the author. High time the above clause was made applicable to Indian publishers too.
K.R.N. Swamy, Maharaja Features, Mumbai
Glad that Recommendations is back. Wonder what made it disappear in the first place.
P.S. Seshadri, Ahmedabad
Ajay Devgan is a superb actor (Quiet Riot, Sept 15). He excels when playing a strong, brooding character as in Zakhm or Lajja, in a highly stylised, minimalist turn as Malik Bhai in Company, or as an explosively angry, bitter young man in Naajayaz. But to extrapolate from this to say he’s the inheritor of Dilip Kumar or AB’s combined mantle is absurd. He can’t compare with Big B in terms of sheer presence. As for Dilip saab, he’s in a different league altogether.
Shyamala B. Cowsik, Wasenaar, The Netherlands
Apropos your piece Go For 7 on Anju Bobby George (Sept 15), maybe it’s time Gurinder Chadha made a sequel to Bend It Like Beckham. The film perhaps better represented the milieu of a cloistered nri society because India at large has always had a proud tradition of women’s athletics and sports. The good news for Indian athletes, especially women, hasn’t stopped coming and we have high hopes from them in the Olympics. For a change, Indian officialdom too deserves praise for discovering and encouraging talent like Anju.
Deepak Mittal, Bangalore
Apropos Khushwant Singh’s review of B.R. Nanda’s book (Those Givens and Takens, Sept 15), his defence of anything Pakistani is so predictable and predetermined that one wonders whether age has made him rigid and hard-headed. We know how he rushed to defend Pakistan when terrorists killed 35 Sikhs in Chitsinghpora and the Pandits in Pulwama. He’d in fact darkly hinted that the raw may have been behind it. And did he have any privileged information on this? No, just that some friends of his in Pakistan told him so and that was the truth. What gullibility! Is he quoting the same Pakistani friends when he says that the invading Muslim armies razed Hindu temples? In fact, in an interview V.S. Naipaul gave to Bhaichand Patel some years back for Outlook, he said that Khushwant Singh had showed him the temples which had been razed to make mosques. But Khushwant Singh would never have the guts to say this in a public forum. He will not say anything against the Muslims because he knows what happened to Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen. But then he doesn’t have any right to condemn Hindus who want to build temples at some of their most sacred sites either. My personal assessment is he says things for effect. He can say a million things against Hindus and still survive. We’ll still hold him as a loveable, Scotch-sipping, naughty sardar!
Sanjay, on e-mail
